Susan Rogers (email: srogers@leeuniversity.edu)
is an associate professor at Lee University in Cleveland, TN, where she teaches courses in nineteenth-century
literature and the British novel. This article is the result of her participation in the
National Humanities Center's seminar on Emma (Summer 2003).

“Emma
could not resist.” This sentence marks the most dramatic pause of the novel.
In the next line Emma affronts Miss Bates and earns for herself the
reprimand that propels Emma’s most earnest effort at self-reflection.
Why couldn’t she resist? Had
she endured all the good humor and tedium she could manage? Or was the problem
with Emma something subtler? What
preceded this moment that made her incapable of thinking of Miss Bates’s
vulnerability or her own responsibility to an old friend?
What precipitates this breakdown in Emma’s usually unfailing sense of
decorum? Perhaps the
answers begin with the disharmony that mars the day at Box Hill.
High expectations for a day of exploring quickly give way to
disappointment and tension between the various groups.
When Frank Churchill tries to counteract the general “languor” of the
party, he leads Emma into a display of careless self-aggrandizement that makes a
mockery of marriage and affronts the other members of the party. In the course
of two hours we watch Emma chafe under the restrictions of the roles she is
assigned, in jest as well as in earnest. We
see her play with the idea of her own power and the image of herself as Romantic
heroine before falling into error through a growing fear of the future she
faces.

Emma styles herself an “imaginist” for her interest in shaping plots from the
lives of the people around her. While
she imagines Romance and intrigue for her friends, her thoughts are never far
from her wishes for herself. Her
crafting of roles for Harriet and others has a direct correlation in her own
self-fashioning. Characteristic of
Jane Austen, the social environment of Highbury village provides the site for
this activity. As Emma carefully
watches others, she is consistently aware of them watching her.
We see this at the Coles’ party. As
Emma watches Mr. Knightley mingle and interact, she imagines the elegance with
which he must dance. She sees that
she was right when he takes Harriet to the floor.
When she is, at last, his partner, her pleasure in his dancing is
enhanced by her sense of others’ pleasure in the figure he and she offer (230).

Emma’s self-fashioning is perhaps most clearly revealed through her relationship to
Harriet Smith. Harriet, thrilled
and grateful for every attention Emma bestows, holds an unreflectively positive
opinion of her mentor. As Mr.
Knightley rightly perceives, “‘She knows nothing herself, and looks upon
Emma as knowing every thing’” (38). With
Harriet, Emma can speak of herself without fear of being questioned or
contradicted. It is to Harriet that
Emma offers her image of independent spinsterhood, a fantasy future of security
and importance.

This projection offers the novel’s most complete picture of Emma’s desires for
her future. The picture she draws
is surprisingly negative. She
justifies her choice of a single life through what she does not lack and
does not need:

“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry.
Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never
have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not
think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool
to change such a situation as mine.
Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want;
consequence I do not want: I
believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house
as I am Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved
and important; so always first and always right in any man’s eyes as I am in
my father’s.” (emphasis added, 84)

The commingling of desire and negation reveals deep-seated doubts.
Emma sees her future in terms of absences despite her assertions of
autonomy and confidence.

With Miss Taylor recently married, Emma does not possess a role model for the single life
she imagines. Instead she offers
what she will not be; she will not be like Miss Bates.
Her effort to distance herself from that image leads her to exclaim,
“‘[I]f I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates . . . I would marry
to-morrow. But between us, I am
convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried’”
(84-85). The impoverished
spinster and the spinster of means are very different, she insists.
Poverty creates constriction of mind and means, which, in turn, leads to
narrowness of thought and bad humor. This
is why the state of singleness is not more highly regarded.
She assures Harriet that “‘a single woman, of good fortune, is always
respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else’” (85).
This may be Emma’s dearest wish, but the conflicted discourse she
offers leaves the impression that Emma has very little confidence in the future
she creates in this passage. In the
months between this conversation and the outing at Box Hill, Emma watches as her
efforts to craft such futures for others lead to disappointed hopes and wounded
hearts. By midsummer her confidence
in her ability to shape her own future must have been further weakened.

When the anticipation that precedes the Box Hill picnic is converted to disappointment,
and the participants separate into smaller groups, Emma finds herself matched
with Harriet and Frank. This was
hardly the plan for the picnic. It
was supposed to be a day of “exploring” with the prospect of escaping
routine. The fine views and open
landscape should create a sense of greater space, of larger possibilities. The
opposite occurs. The groups refuse
to mingle and Emma spends her day with Harriet and Frank, the two who amuse Emma
most and consistently offer her a flattering image of herself.
But there is a sense of confinement in the arrangement that
becomes apparent in the judgment Emma passes on her companions.
Frank is unusually silent and stupid.
He offers only pat answers and no real diversion.
Harriet is deemed equally dull. The
relationships that Emma has nurtured in the past several months, in the light of
the midsummer sun, appear vacuous and severely limited.
Emma experiences an increased sense of being hemmed in, confined.
The morning’s diversions will leave Emma longing to be with
anyone other than her chosen companions and eager to put this day behind her.

When the entire group is seated, Frank makes Emma the focus of everyone’s attention
with an unexpected show of gallantry. With
Frank, Emma has attempted the fantasy of Romantic heroine, determining before
she met him that they were perfectly suited to each other, in part because the
people of Highbury expected the match. Privately
Emma realized somewhat quickly that she was not in love with Frank and believes
that he harbors no genuine interest in her.
They continue to enjoy each other’s company as well as the attention
they generate within the Highbury set. The
two offer the picture of young lovers for their own diversion as well as the
amusement of the others gathered on the hill.

But the tensions at work are revealed in the complicated turn the dialogue takes early
on. Emma reprimands Frank for
having been in a bad humor the previous day at Donwell Abbey.
He should be more self-controlled, according to Emma.
When Frank courteously offers, “‘You order me, whether you speak or
not,’” she clarifies the distinction between control and self-control (369).
If he had been under her control the previous day, he would have
conducted himself more appropriately. Further,
she charges him with having “broken bounds” the previous day and losing his
self-control. The exchange
foregrounds the issues of control and self-control, issues close to Emma’s
heart. Emma struggles to believe
herself in control of her destiny, though her situation shows little evidence of
it. In fact, the present excursion
is a reminder of just how little real control Emma commands.
She originally planned the outing with Mr. Weston as a small gathering
separate from the Elton picnic. Yet,
in this, as in the Crown ball, Emma’s sense of decorum requires that she allow
the presumptuous Mrs. Elton the role of patroness and organizer.
Her self-control, despite the confidence with which she recommends it to
Frank, is equally tenuous.

Even as Emma accepts the attentions Frank offers, she realizes the hollowness of his
flattery. We are told repeatedly
that Emma has no intentions toward Frank and that his gallantry means nothing.
Their behavior “had such an appearance as no English word but flirtation could
very well describe” (368). The
Oxford English Dictionary defines the
verb form as “to play at courtship” or “to make love without serious
intention.” Emma and Frank
flirt to counteract the tedium of the outing.
Their words carry no real emotional fervency.
Rather, Emma is “gay and thoughtless” because “she felt less happy
than she expected” (368). Her
laughter is a product of her disappointment.
Her disingenuousness is reinforced when she laughs “as carelessly as
she could” (369). She
judges his attentions “judicious,” relegating them to the well chosen rather
than the sincere or unaffected. Although
he seems to care for nothing but her amusement, both Frank and Emma know this is
not the case. Both enjoy the
attention of the larger group. They
flirt to pass their afternoon and to pretend, briefly, to believe in the
illusion of themselves as Highbury’s most notable couple.
What appears as mirth is actually pride and affectation.

In the couple’s banter we see Emma’s self-objectification magnified.
She is generally conscious of how others perceive her,
particularly in relation to Frank. Even
before meeting him, we are told, she took “a sort of pleasure in the idea of
their being coupled in their friends’ imaginations” (119).
As the two play with Romance, Emma moves beyond assuming the image of
herself as heroine in the minds of others to actually invoicing others:
“‘Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse flirted together
excessively.’ They were laying themselves open to that very phrase–and to
having it sent off in a letter to Maple Grove by one lady, to Ireland by
another” (368). Emma writes a
line for Mrs. Elton and Jane Fairfax to use when reporting this day to their
extended relations. The passage is
important because it reveals Emma’s heightened concentration on herself as the
object of other people’s attentions. With
Harriet Emma crafts the picture of herself she wishes Harriet to accept.
Here, she separates herself from the immediate attention of
Frank’s repartee in order to enjoy the image of herself spread far beyond this
hill, past Highbury and its environs, to Maple Grove, and as far, even, as
Ireland. Emma’s sense of
confinement is evident in her desire to “mean something” beyond the borders
of this village. She longs to make
some imprint, even the one line of reproof, offered by “ladies” she does not
consider her social equals.

When Emma warns Frank that they are making too much of a show for the others, Frank
engages the entire group in his attentions toward Emma.
He plays the part of a courtier who enacts the submission to Emma’s
control he had joked about earlier. In
a tone of mock-courtesy, he establishes a court in which cleverness is a virtue
and Emma “presides.” As Frank
becomes increasingly aggressive, “attacking,” “demanding,” and
“requiring” the others to respond, Emma in turn becomes more cautious.
Oblivious to the offensiveness of his behavior, Frank
insists, in Emma’s name, that Emma be told exactly what each person is
presently thinking. After a couple of muffled responses, Mr. Knightley inquires
if she would really like to know what he is thinking.
With an effort to appear nonchalant, Emma responds, “‘Upon no account
in the world. It is the very last
thing I could stand the brunt of just now’” (369-70).

The combination of disappointment and self-absorption has left Emma out of sorts and
vulnerable. She is weakened by her
growing recognition of the vacuity of the game she has played with Frank.
His attentions, ostensibly to her, are only for himself.
He has played her, in ways she does not yet understand, to divert
attention away from his relationship to Jane Fairfax.
But Emma may be beginning to realize at this point that his attentions
toward her have little to do with genuine preferment or intention.
She is for him what he has been to her, a mirror that returns a pleasing
image, no more. She has been the
Harriet to his Emma. He himself
presides over the game at Box Hill. Emma
is merely the object of the game. She
is set in a place where she is admired and flattered, but she does not set the
rules of the game or the tenor of the proceedings.
She is bound more closely by the attentions paid her.
When Miss Bates presents herself, even more vulnerable, with
“good-humoured dependence on every body’s assent, ” Emma gives way to a
baser instinct, one she is too weakened to withstand (370).

But why is Miss Bates the object of Emma’s ire? Mrs.
Elton seems a more likely target, with her obvious efforts to replace Emma as
the prime figure of the Highbury social scene.
The answer may be in Emma’s early projection of herself as a respected
single woman. Much has happened in
the intervening months. Emma has
completely misread Mr. Elton, labeling his advances toward her the actions of a
man in love with Harriet. She has
toyed with the idea of being in love with Frank, only to realize that agreeable
manners and community expectations do not lead to love, only the appearance of
love. Her confidence in her
ability to read the landscape is shaken, and with it, the confidence with which
she envisions the future. She
regards Miss Bates as dependent and ridiculous, the negative of her most fervent
projection. In this moment Emma
fears she will become the Miss Bates of the next generation, herself the object
of derision and dismissal. Her
fortune and her quick wit have not protected her from blunder in the
relationships she had developed the past few months.
She is seated with Harriet and Frank; her errors are at hand.
Miss Bates is before her. Her
sense of decorum abruptly gives way to aggression.
In attacking Miss Bates Emma rejects this possible future for herself.

Before Mr. Knightley engages to correct her error, Emma has already
wished herself separated from her chosen companions, preferring to take the
views of Box Hill “almost alone, and quite unattended to” (374).
She has seen the limitations of the relationships she has nurtured and
realized her need to look elsewhere for approval and direction.
When Mr. Knightley arrives with a greater sense of the grievousness of
her affront, Emma’s heart is prepared to accept the reproof.